the mainzer sachkatalog and its background

The Mainzer Sachkatalog and Its BackgroundAuthor(s): Gordon StevensonSource: The Library Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Jul., 1970), pp. 318-339Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4309948 .

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THE MAINZER SACHKATALOG AND ITS BACKGROUND

GORDON STEVENSON

Es muss etwas geschehen, um dem wahrhaft babylonischen Zustand unserer sachlichen Katalogisierung zu steuern.-Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer, Ko- nigsberg, 1929.

ABSTRACT

The classified catalog has been a major preoccupation of German librarianship for over a century. Since 1900 the problem has been one of finding a useful alternate to the handwritten classified book catalog of the nineteenth century. An integral part of the traditional system of library organization, built into the structure of the profession with pervasive historical roots, the classified catalog proved to be the most intractable issue to emerge during the transition to the new librarianship, which was oriented to public service. One of the few new systems to be developed between 1900 and 1940 was the catalog at the Mainz City Library. The library's history and traditions, its collections, personnel, functions, and even its physical facilities, all had some bearing on decisions affecting the structure of the new catalog. The problems at Mainz were typical of those faced by many other German scholarly libraries. The solution, a new classified cataloging method worked out by Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer, was unique and had extensive repercussions on subsequent developments in the history of the classified catalog in Germany.

INTRODUCTION

In the fall of 1909, the director of the City Library of Mainz, Gustav Binz, began the work of recataloging the library book collection, which at that time amounted to around 200,000 volumes, exclusive of a considerable collection of incunabula, maps, and other graphic material [1, p. 696]. Binz, then in his early forties, had been appointed Oberbibliothekar the previous year. He went to Mainz from the University of Basel, where he had held a professorship since 1900 [2, 3]. Like many of the leading librarians in Germany during th'is period, Binz was a philologist. His special field was early English and Ger- manic languages, but he had broad scholarly interests and would have been drawn to Mainz by its rich historical re- sources. Among the more attractive aspects of Mainz were the Gutenberg Mu- seum and the Gutenberg Society, both of which had been founded following the festival and exhibit of 1900 with which the city of Mainz celebrated the five-hundredth anniversary of Guten-

berg's birth [4, vol. 2, p. 35]. The museum and the society's offices were housed in the City Library; Binz served as director of both and edited the pub- lications of the society.

In his first annual report to the city authorities, Binz commented on the un- satisfactory condition of the library catalogs [5, p. 42]. The situation was most serious, and it was clear that no easy solution was possible. Both the alphabetical author catalog and the classified catalog were so inadequate and incomplete that he had no recourse but to plan to recatalog and reclassify the entire collection working, not from the old catalogs, but from the books themselves. Thus began a project, the extent of which Binz himself could hardly have foreseen, which was to last over four decades and survive two world wars and a depression. During the long years of work on the catalog, the size of the book collection at Mainz more than doubled.

The recataloging of the stock according to the recently published definitive edition of the Prussian Instructions was

318



THE MAINZER SACHKATALOG 319

nothing unusual [6], for these rules were being widely adopted in Germany. The new classified catalog, however, was to become one of the most important produced in Germany during the first half of the twentieth century. The Mainzer Sachkatalog provided some new solu- tions to some old problems. The solu- tions were such that in time the method of the Sachkatalog was adopted by nineteen German libraries, a dispersal which may be without precedent in the history of the classified catalog in Germany.

ORIGINS OF THE MAINZ COLLECTIONS

At the beginning of the recataloging project, the City Library was a little over 100 years old, but its origins went back much further. The history of the library, its collections, and its catalogs are closely bound up with the political, social, and religious history of Mainz. Located on the west bank of the Rhine at the point where it is joined by the Main, the city had more than once been plagued by war and plundering armies which left their marks on the nature of the collections held by the library. It was during one of the darker chapters in the city's history, the French occupation of 1797-1814, that the library was established as a public institution. The circumstances surrounding its founding are related to the disposal of property formerly held by another public institution, the University of Mainz.

The university, which was established by the archbishop of Mainz, Diether von Isenburg, in 1477, had always been one of Germany's smaller universities. It never became very important, though there were promising signs of efflores- cence during the Enlightenment. Then came, in 1792, the siege of Mainz. Five years later, Mainz and everything on the left bank of the Rhine were given to France by the Treaty of Campo Formio.

The invasion, secularization, and the fall of Prussia accounted for the closing of over twenty universities between 1792 and 1814. Such was the fate of the University of Mainz.' For a brief and confused period after the closing of the university in 1798, its library was part of the medical school, which was not closed until 1817. During part of this period, Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim served as librarian. Then, on the basis of a French decree of January 28, 1803, the library was turned over to the city with instructions that it be continued and supported [7, p. 517]. Fischer, who by this time had finished his Typogra- phischen Seltenheiten and other incunabula research [8], soon moved on to Moscow, where he had accepted a natural-history professorship. The Mainz legacy of this brilliant scholar was a classified catalog of the library collection, which, though not complete, was to remain the library's only extensive subject guide for over a century. Mainz re- members Fischer for other reasons; he became rather attached to some of the "typographical rarities," and their rar- ity in Mainz increased with his departure-he simply could not resist taking some of them with him to Moscow [9, p. 199].

When the French left Mainz in 1814, the fortunes of the city were indeed at a low level. The population had been reduced from 32,000 to 23,000 in the wake of a typhus epidemic, and it was to be many decades before Mainz would again emerge as an important center of scholarship [10, p. 11].

With the departure of the French in 1814, the library remained in the control of the city. By then, however, the original university library collection had

2Mainz did not again have a university until the Johannes Gutenberg University was founded in 1946.



320 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

long since disappeared. The Thirty Years' War had provided King Gustav Adolf of Sweden with a convenient way of increasing the library holdings at Uppsala, and the libraries at Mainz were plundered. The university library did not begin to recover from this catas- trophe until 1773, when its stock was replenished by the 30,000 volume collection of the former Mainz Jesuit Col- lege. In 1781, Archbishop Carl Joseph von Erthal dissolved three cloisters (the Mainz Kartause, Altmiunster, and Reichklara) and transferred their re- sources (including the 10,000 volume Kartause library) to the university [ 11 ]. When the library became city property, the collections amounted to around 80,000 volumes, though the losses of valuable material during the period between 1798 and 1814 had been considerable [9, pp. 198-202 passim].

VELKE 'S TENURE

During most of the nineteenth century, the function of the Mainz Library was largely custodial. By and large, German municipal libraries were not well supported in the nineteenth century, and Mainz was no exception. Hours of opening were short and the staff was small. The fortunes of the library began to improve after 1850, and when, in 1879, Wilhelm Velke joined the staff, Mainz had found the man who would begin the transition to modern library services. Velke had had some library experience at Marburg, G6ttingen, and Strasbourg. He would, then, have been familiar with one of the best orga- nized German academic libraries and one which had a famous classified catalog-the University of Gottingen. A few months after his appointment, Velke wrote to August Wilmanns of the dis- orderly condition of the Mainz Library, a condition which he said went back to

the days of the French occupation. He found uncataloged 1,200 manuscripts and 4,500 incunabula,2 and of the basic collection (which had grown to around 150,000 volumes), only half were listed in the main author catalog [12, vol. 3, pt. 2, p. 394].

Caught up in the general economic developments of Germany and following the leadership of the emerging Prus- sian librarianship, the Mainz Library began a slow but steady growth. It was, as Binz later wrote, a period of "quiet development" [13, p. 437]. Typical of this ruhiger Entwicklung is a report published in the September 1886 issue of the Zentralblatt fiir Bibliothekswesen [14]. In 1885, an additional 4,000 marks were added to the book budget for special purchases; the regular budget for 1886-87 was 8,400 marks, an increase of 2,000 marks over the previous year; 3

among the numerous gifts received during these years, the 2,000 volume collection of the lately deceased Oberbiirger- meister Du Mont was singled out for special mention; at auction, the library purchased the collection of Freiherrn von Cunibert of Aschaffenburg and the collection of a former Gymnasium teach- er, Dr. Franz Umpfenbach.

Despite Velke's contributions, which were substantial, the problem of the cataloging remained.

THE OLD CATALOGS

In the early 1890s, Paul Schwenke's directory of German libraries included

2Statements as to the number of incunabula at Mainz in nineteenth-century sources run as high as 5,000. An authoritative modern source, the 1929 Minerva-Handbiucher volume on libraries, placed the figure at 2,929 (including all pre-1520 imprints) [7, p. 517].

'The average price of a German trade book in 1885 was 3.30 marks; the annual number of titles published in the German language sphere would have been around 15,000 [4, vol. 1, pp. 290, 299].




the following list of catalogs under the Mainz entry:4

General alphabetical catalog, 42 volumes Catalog of manuscripts Catalogs of incunabula (alphabetical and

chronological) Catalog of Moguntina Realkatalog to 1780, 34 volumes Zuwachs-Verzeichniss, 1881-82, 1883-85,

1886-91.

The "general alphabetical catalog" is a handwritten book catalog of author entries. It had been started around 1870, included titles published after 1500, and, though an imperfect and incomplete tool, was maintained until 1909 [5, p. 42].

The "Realkatalog to 1780" is the Catalogus Systematicus Bibliothecae Universitatis Moguntinae, the classified catalog prepared during the time of Fischer von Waldheim. It consists of 27 volumes (not 34, as reported by Schwenke), with a total of 25,480 entries [5, p. 40]. The classification system which Fischer had outlined in the introduction to his Typograpkischen Seltenheiten was not the one actually used in the Mainz catalogs.' The Cata- logus Systematicus divides the material into 2 7 volumes with the following main classes:

1. Anatomia, Physiologia, Pathologia 2. Arithmetica, Geometria, Astronomia 3. Artes, Technologia 4. Chymia

5. Geographia, Itinera, Mythologia, Diplo- matica, Numismatica

6-9. Historia civilis universalis et particularis

10-11. Historia ecclesiastica universalis et particularis

12. Historia naturalis, Oeconomia, Anatomia comparata

13A. Latinorum Prosaici, Historici, et Phi- losophi; Grammatica; Emblemata

13B. Graecorum Historici, Romanorum Po- etae et Historici

14-16. Jus 17. Literatura uniiversalis et particularis,

Diaria 18. Medicina 19. Paedagogica, Polyhistorica 20. Pharmacologia, Hydrologia, Chirurgia,

Obstetrices, Forensia 21. Philosophia 22. Philosophi critici Romanorum, Archao-

logia 23. Physica experimentalis 24. Graecorum Poetae et Philosophi 25. Graecorum Poetae, Latinorum Poetae 26. Scniptores recentiores 27. Theologia.

Each volume of the Fischer catalog is preceded by a conspectus of the classification used in that volume; the inclu- sion of page references makes each conspectus a classified index to the contents of the volume. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the conspectus of volume 3:

Conspectus Catalogi Scriptorum de artibus et technologia

A. I. Scriptores de artibus in universalum pg. I

II. Scriptores de artibus particularum 7 a De arte Scribendi 7 b De arte Pingendi 11 c De arte Architectonica 23 d De arte Militari 37 e De arte Musica 73 f De arte Saltandi 83 g De arte Scenica 86 h De arte Equistri 87 i De arte Navigandi 89

B. Scriptores de Commercio et Technologia 99 et fgg.

'Today all of these catalogs are extant, as are others which Schwenke did not list, apparently because they were of only historical interest [15, p. 243].

'The classification outlined in the Typographi- schen Seltenheiten contained eighteen main classes: (A) Litteratur im weitesten Sinne, (B) Mathe- matik, (C) Philosophie, (D) Physik, (E) Geschichte, (F) Medizin, (G) Chemie, (H) Na- turgeschichte, (I) Erziehung, (K) Kunste, (L) Handlung und Gewerbe/Technologie, (M) Schriften vermischten Inhalts, (N) Alte Schrift- steller, Klassiker, (0) Neuere Schriftsteller, (P) Bibeln, (Q) Theologie, (R) Patristik, (S) Recht [5, p. 40; 8, pt. 1, pp. 9-13].




The Zuwachs-Verzeichnisse, which are the only printed catalogs on Schwenke's list, were started by Velke in 1881 as classified subject guides to current acquisitions. Small, octavo-size pamphlets, usually running to fewer than 200 pages, they were only a temporary substitute for a complete classified catalog and were discontinued after 1903. The classification scheme used in these indexes was typical of the broad classes found in classification schemes of the period:

I. Bibliographie, Bibliothekenkunde, Ge- schichte der Buchdruckerkunst (Bib- liography, Library Science, History of Printing)

II. Liter&geschichte (History of Litera- ture)

III. Vermischte Schriften (Mixed Collec- tions)

IV. Sprachen- und Schriftkunde, Philologie (Language and Writing, Philology)

V. Griechische und lateinische Literatur, Inschriften (Greek and Latin Litera- ture, Inscriptions)

VI. Schdne Literatur (Belles lettres) VII. Kunst und Kunstgeschichte, Archiologm

(Art and Art History, Archaeology) VIII. Historische Wissenschaften (Ldnder-

und Vilkerkunde, Geschichte, Chrono- logie, Kulturgeschichte) (Historical Sci- ences [Geography and Ethnology, His- tory, Chronology, Cultural History])

IX. Kirchen- und Religionsgeschichte, The- ologie (History of Churches and Reli- gion, Theology)

X. Philosophie, Padagogik (Philosophy, Education)

XI. Rechts- und Staatswissenschaft (Law and Political Science)

XII. Naturwissenschaft, Mathematik (Nat- ural Sciences, Mathematics)

XIII. Medizin (Medicine) XIV. Technologie, Handel und Verkehr, Land-

uirtschaft (Technology, Commerce and Traffic, Agnrculture)

XV. Militdr- und See-Wesen (Military and Naval Affairs) [14, p. 453]

This arrangement shows a certain relationship to the major classes of An- dreas A. E. Schleiermacher's Biblio-

graphisches System der gesamten Wis- senschaftskunde,6 though Schleierma- cher used twenty-four main classes and his was a very detailed system. It was in use in three libraries in the vicinity of Mainz: Darmstadt (where it orig- inated), the University of Giessen, and the Senckenbergische Institut at Frank- furt. It has recently been shown that this system had some influence on the scheme worked out by Julius Schrader for the Realkatalog of the Royal Li- brary in Berlin [16, pp. 295-96, 301- 3].7 By the 1880s, Schleiermacher's classification, then almost forty years old and unrevised, was out of date. In any case, the Mainz Zuwachs-Verzeich- nisse never developed into a full-blown classification system.

TOWARD A GEBRAUCHSBIBLIOTHEK

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the Mainz Library was in transition.8 From a diverse collection of relatively small libraries and book collections, assembled over a period of cen- turies and brought together as often by historical accident as by design, the library found itself at the turn of the century a mass of material, inadequate-

' Until recently, the 1852 edition of Schleier- macher's classification (published at Braunschweig) has been presumed to be the only edition; however, Eugen Paunel claims that the work was first published in 1847 [16, p. 295].

'In view of the considerable fame of the Real- katalog at Berlin, it is surprising that no compre- hensive outline of its classification schedules has been published; writing as recently as 1964, Rudolf Juchhoff noted: "It is much to be regretted that the system of the Prussian State Library has never been described in print. Otherwise, owing to the fact that much labour has been bestowed on it by a staff of many excellent librarians, its importance for other libraries would have been greater, and trends towards a basic system for all university libraries would have been strengthened" [17, p. 871.

' The general background of library development in this period is covered in Georg Leyh's "Durch- bildung der wissenschaftlichen Gebrauchsbiblio- thek" [12, vol. 3, pt. 2, pp. 307-4911.




ly housed, difficult of access, poorly arranged, and haphazardly cataloged. The library had no shelflist catalog, the alphabetical author catalog (the basic tool of any library) was still incomplete and unreliable, and subject guides were inadequate.

As has frequently been the case, plans to move into a new building presented the occasion for a reorganization of the stock and its control and for some new thinking about the functions of the library. The library had outgrown its quarters in the east wing of the old Electorates Palace, which it had occu- pied since 1845, and the move to the new building in 1912 would be accom- panied by new services. A popular library, a Volksbibliothek, was planned, and the budget had been increased [18]. The new building would provide ade- quate facilities for the offices of the Gu- tenberg Society and Museum, the city archives, and such diverse collections as the Miunzsammlung and the sculpture collection of the local Society of Plastic Arts. Thus, besides the main project of recataloging the basic stock, there were other projects planned or underway: The city archives were in need of reorganization and indexing, the local- history collection (that is, the collection of Moguntina) was to be continued, and the collection of incunabula needed spe- cialized cataloging-the Prussian Com- mission for the Gesamtkatalog der Wie- gendrucke had been founded in 1904, and Mainz would be a major contrib- utor). In his efforts to make the City Library the focal point for all Mainz school, society, and government libraries, Gustav Binz, who had begun his directorship in 1908, planned a central periodical inventory, and steps were taken to house and administer local society libraries [13, p. 440]. Interlibrary loan services were already well estab-

lished, and in 1913, Binz noted that in serving his users he received, once or twice a week, packages of books from the neighboring libraries in Giessen, Frankfurt, and Darmstadt and even from more distant libraries in Stras- bourg, Stuttgart, Berlin, and Munich [13, p. 441].

The custodial period of librarianship was drawing to a close, and Mainz was on its way to becoming a modern Ge- brauchsbibliothek. It was clear that the type of modern library services planned by Binz needed an accurate, efficient, and complete system of catalogs and indexes.

THE NEW BUILDING

The shelving of the book stock in the new building would have some bearing on the structure of the subject approach used in the new catalog. In the early 1900s, the trend was toward a very sharp architectural division of basic library functions: reading, book storage, and administration. The principle of closed stacks was accepted everywhere as the only way to cope with the organization and control of large quantities of books. Once the books were in closed stacks, there was little justification for continuing detailed shelf classification' -which is not to say that all libraries gave up shelf classification.

There were other arguments against classifying the material itself. As Georg Leyh wrote on more than one occasion [20, pp. 39, 212, 224], if the order and arrangement of the books on the shelves correspond to the order and arrangement of the cards, or entries, in the classified catalog, the catalog becomes in-

'For a discussion of pre-World War I German library architecture, see Redenbacher's study of the University of Erlangen library [19]. Redenbacher says that this period was characterized by the introduction of the multistoried magazine without any clear idea of the consequences of its use.




flexible (made immobile by the dead weight of thousands of books) and cannot be adapted without considerable trouble and expense to the growth of knowledge and the shifting relation- ships between and within subject groups.

The new building at Mainz took advantage of a number of modern devices, including the latest type of book shelving, which would be used in closed stacks and thus preclude the need for detailed shelf classification. When the Verein deutscher Bibliothekare met in Mainz in 1913, it was with considerable pride that Binz pointed out that his new building was the first library anywhere to take advantage of "an entirely new discovery of Herr Lipman" of the Stras- bourg firm of Wolf Netter and Jacobi [13, p. 439]. He was referring to the latest improved version of the Lipman- gestell, a type of adjustable metal shelving which, when combined with other structural innovations, made possible the characteristic stack ("magazine," or Buicherhaus, as Binz called it) of the period.'0 In the Mainz building the bulk of the book stock was shelved in a nine- level stack area and arranged by size in a numerus currens order (that is, acces- sion number order) within a series of sixty-seven subject groups. This method of shelving was a variation of the Grup- penaufstellung system which had been

developed by Martin Schrettinger at the Munich Hofbibliothek early in the nineteenth century. At Mainz, efficiency of retrieval was facilitated by intrali- brary telephones, pneumatic tubes, and an elevator [13, p. 440].

The idea of the public catalog, the Publikumskatalog, had surfaced around 1900, but its implications were not fully realized, and the space allotted for the public catalogs in the new Mainz building very soon proved to be inadequate [21, p. 8].

THE ALPHABETICAL CATALOG

At the start of the work in 1909, the entire library staff consisted of Binz, one subject specialist, two librarians, one secretary, and one Volontdr.1' The first stage of the recataloging project was the preparation of a new main alphabetical author catalog according to the Prussian Instructions to replace the old handwritten book catalog. The book catalog was closed out, and all new acquisitions were cataloged on cards. Be- cause of subsequent staff shortages, real progress on the basic stock was not made until after World War I, and work was not finished until the 1950s [5, p. 42]. The original university library collection was never entirely included, and the old book catalog is still used for pre- 1815 imprints owned by the library before the start of the recataloging project.

During the work, two extra copies of each card were typed in order to provide entries for a shelflist catalog and a classified catalog, the form of which had not yet been decided. The cards were gros- sen Soennecken-Zettel, an oversize card

"I Robert Lipman was an art-metal-work de- signer from Strasbourg. His metal library shelving marked the beginning of a new period in book shelving. His original "invention" was an adjustable shelf, first used at the University of Strasbourg in 1889. Eventually the magazine was constructed in such a way that it consisted of a skeleton of vertical and horizontal metal supports; this skeleton bore all of the weight of the stacks (books, shelves, floors, and even the roof), and the vertical posts formed the sides of the shelves. This type of construction started what Georg Leyh considered the second period in the history of magazine construction (the first period had started with the new stacks at the British Museum around 1830) [4, vol. 2, pp. 349-50, 394].

li The subject specialist was Adolf Tronnier, who worked with the incunabula collection [1]. During these years the Volontlr (or Volontirin) was frequently a person in training for librarianship (for example, H. W. Eppelsheimer and Claus Nissen started their library careers at Mainz as Volontarc).




(10.5 X 18.5 centimeters) which is still used at Mainz [22, p. 408]. Around 40,000 cards were produced each year (for around 13,000 titles) [21, p. 13]. By the time serious work was started on the classified catalog in the early 1920s, around 150,000 cards had been accumu- lated for it.

START OF THE CLASSIFIED CATALOG

The work on the classified catalog began when Adolf Waas was charged with the assignment of arranging the cards for German literature and its history. Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer joined the staff in 1919 and was subsequently assigned the job of arranging the cards for the sections on foreign literature. Eppelsheimer [23,2 4], then twenty-nine years old, had just been demobilized following four years of service during World War I. He brought with him a broad background of studies in law, economics, art history, Germanistik, and literary scholarship. His first major work, a study of Petrarch, was completed in 1914 but was not published until 1926. He had attended the universities of Freiburg, Munich, and Mar- burg. Eppelsheimer soon proved to be the guiding spirit behind the development of the new system, and, although others were involved in the work, there has never been any doubt that the Sack- katalog method was essentially his crea- tion.

At Mainz during these early years, Eppelsheimer began work on his Hand- buck der Weltliteratur,12 which is one of

the two works by which he is best known outside of Germany;'3 but the first published work of his Mainz years was his Weltliteratur [26], a catalog of the Mainz collection. Thus, Eppelsheim- er's long-standing interest in literature and bibliography is tied in with his first major assignment as a librarian.

In 1920, Gustav Binz moved back to the University of Basel, where he became directlor of the library, and in Sep- tember of that year, the new director at Mainz, Aloys Ruppel, the Gutenberg scholar,'4 charged Eppelsheimer and Waas with arranging the mass of completed duplicate cards into a classified catalog.

SEARCH FOR A SYSTEM

The major decision was the selection of a system of classification. Earlier, under the direction of Binz, the Dewey Decimal System had been tried but was abandoned. This is not surprising, for the Dewey system had not been favor- ably received anywhere in Germany.

At the time, there would have been comparatively few detailed library classification schedules in print, though summary outlines of many were easily available. The German schemes of Schleiermacher, Zangemeister, and Hartwig had been available since 1847, 1885, and 1888, respectively. The Schleiermacher scheme was out of date, and Karl Zangemeister's (though it was to remain in use at the University of Heidelberg as late as 1969) was considered inadequate. So Eppelsheimer first turned to the scheme which Otto Hart- wig had developed for the University of Halle [2 7] . Although some changes were made to bring it up to date, it did not serve Eppelsheimer's purpose. He found

' When the first edition was published in 1937 [25], Eppelsheimer, because of his political views, had fallen out of favor with the National Socialist government and had been relieved of his position as director of the Hessian Landesbibliothek at Darmstadt; he was regarded with suspicion by the Reichsschrifttumskammer, and in 1938 his writing activities were cut short. The publication of the Handbuch was later considered as an act of daring on the part of the publisher [23, p. 282].

18 The other is Bibliographie der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft [24, p. 11].

"' Ruppel came to Mainz from the Landesbiblio- thek at Fulda [2].




the scheme to be "arbitrary, autocratic, and involved" [22, p. 407]. Neverthe- less, the Halle scheme was useful as a device for setting up a preliminary arrangement of the cards in the Mainz catalog, and the experience provided Eppelsheimer with an insight into classification problems and a foundation for his own work. He arranged the cards at Mainz into twenty-six major classes.

After an examination of the existing systems and the considerable periodical literature dealing with the classified catalog which had been published by the early 1920s, it was decided that Mainz would go its own way and create an entirely new instrument. To understand why this was necessary, we have to comment on the general condition of the classified catalog in Germany at this time.

THE CLASSIFIED CATALOG

When Arnim Graesel published his new edition of Julius Petzholdt's book on library administration, in 1890, he wrote that the classification systems in use in German libraries were fast zahl- los, almost without number [28, p. 152]. The next three decades saw little change in this situation. When Georg Schneider published his Handbuch in the mid- 1920s, he commented on the steady pro- liferation of classification schemes and wrote: "Germany seems to head the list with at least fifty" [29, p. 206], probably a conservative estimate. Virtually every library had its own system, though, to be sure, there were certain basic similarities, and many systems could be traced back to a common source. There seemed, however, to be no particular need for the wide acceptance of any one system, nor was there an institution or organization to provide the leadership in standardization. It was a generally accepted principle that the unique character of each library re-

quired that each develop its own classification system. The political disunity which had existed before the 1870s did nothing to encourage standardization, and the tradition of independence per- sisted long after it could be justified on any grounds.

Late in the nineteenth century, the Prussian libraries, under the dynamic leadership of Friedrich Althoff, were or- ganized into a loose, but effective, system which produced many cooperative projects. The remarkable success of the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, the Deutscher Gesamtkatalog, the Berlin Titeldrucke, and the Prussian Instruc- tions could not, however, be repeated in the standardization of classification.

In the era of library construction which extended from the 1880s to World War I, the books were moved into closed stacks, where they were usually kept in a classified order which was parallel to the entries in the classified catalog. The catalogs were thick, folio-size, handwritten book catalogs, difficult to use and with complicated systems of notation, and were generally considered to be working tools of the library administration to which the public was given only limited and supervised access. The growth of knowledge, the size of library collections, and the growing numbers of users increasingly emphasized the in- herent weakness of the nineteenth-century system of organization.

The need for classification reform was widely recognized by librarians. In 1904, Walter Erman wrote that the catalogs of the Prussian universities were "out of date, incomplete, and unusable." In 1911, Paul Schwenke claimed that he had found only two Realkataloge which were usable (those at Halle and Greifs- wald) [30, p. 390]. The most damning indictment, however, came from a non- librarian, the distinguished classical




philologist Hermann Diels.15 At the same time, Diels expressed his contempt for the "professional librarian": The "professional librarians" have used great acumen and reflection in order to work out the most involved schemes possible. However, since they generally think only of the library administration and not the users, to whom the catalog seems more like an arcanum .... the scholar cannot make the use he would like to of the bibliographical hieroglyphics of these modern catalogs. [31, p. 642]

Diels also quoted the text of a typical directive found in the classified-catalog room: "The permission of the library official on duty is necessary to use the classified catalog" [31]. For one thing, the catalogs were too complicated to be used without some assistance from the staff.

These and other issues were analyzed in a series of articles published in 1912 and 1913 by Georg Leyh. He concluded that the classified catalog in Germany was in a desolate condition and should be renewed with the least possible de- lay [32]. But how to renew it was the problem.

The possibility of abandoning the classified catalog was considered; and after 1900, German librarians went through an extensive, and at times heat- ed, discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the alphabetical subject-heading catalog as a replacement for the classified catalog. The alphabetical subject catalog already had a long history in German bibliography, but as a basic library guide found little acceptance until after 1900, and then in only a few libraries. The major nineteenth-

century exponent of this type of catalog was Martin Schrettinger,16 whose catalog at the Hofbibliothek in Munich was the first major library subject-heading catalog in Germany [35, pp. 15-17]. After 1891, the trade bibliography, the Halbjahrsverzeichnis, included both a systematisches Verzeichnis and a Stick- wort Register [36, p. 168]. The idea of using the two basically different approaches was carried over into libraries. It can be traced back at least to Frie- drich Adolf Ebert, one of the founders of modern German librarianship, who, in 1811, recommended that both types of catalogs be used in the same library [37, p. 170]. The extensive theoretical discussion of the issue after 1900 did little to change the central position of the classified catalog in any but a few libraries. It was generally agreed that neither approach was a satisfactory substitute for the other and that, if only one were possible, it should be the classified catalog. As we shall see, the Mainzer Sachkatalog combined features of both approaches in one catalog.

There were, then, a number of unre- solved issues in the 1920s: the card catalog versus the book catalog, the subject heading versus classification systems, the question of the public-service function of the classified catalog, the inad- equacy of nineteenth-century systems of classification, and the elusive search for a single system that would be ac- ceptable to all German scholarly libraries.

"The coup de grace of Diels's caustic remarks was the fact that they were published in Die Kultur der Gegenwart, a work addressed to a large edu- cated audience and intended as a monumental survey of German culture (including an essay on libraries by Fritz Milkau), outlining accomplish- ments of the past and proposing future developments.

" Schrettinger presented a detailed discussion of the subject-heading catalog in his textbook on library science [33]. An interesting eighteenth-century German subject-heading catalog (and one of the few ever printed-Schrettinger's was a manu- script catalog) is Johann Karl Dahnert's Repertori- um reale universale, the third volume of his catalog of the collection of the University of Greifswald, published in 1776 [34, pp. 204-7]. It was something of a curiosity and seems to have had no impact on subsequent developments in library subject cataloging.




THE SACHKATALOG

When Eppelsheimer presented his method to the library world in 1929 at the Twenty-fifth Annual Conference of the Verein deutscher Bibliothekare, in Konigsberg, he stated that he had no original theories to defend, no theory of knowledge, and no metaphysics of subject cataloging, but only a method. He stated unequivocally that the Mainzer Sachkatalog had emerged solely from practice ("gans und gar aus der Prax- is") [22, p. 407]. The catalog was built up from the collection in hand without a preconceived philosophical, theoretical, or encyclopedic system of knowledge.

By 1924, the bulk of the 150,000 cards had been arranged into major classes. At this point a change in personnel seems to have played an important role in the catalog's development. A young mathematician, Fritz Tolg, who had helped work on the mathematics, physics, and chemistry sections of the catalog for a few months in 192 1, joined the staff early in 1925. During the next few years, the final form of the catalog was established. By 1927, when Aloys Ruppel published his Die Mainzer Stadtbibliothek in der Nackkriegzeit [21, pp. 13-18], he was able to present the essential features of the method in a scant six pages.

Eppelsheimer's Konigsberg paper was his only major statement about the method, and in line with his concern for practical problems of classification, his presentation was a simple and precise explanation of how the catalog was constructed, with a minimum of theory. As he saw it, there were four distinguishing features of his Sachkatalog: (1) The subject cataloging is independent of the shelving system of the books. (2) The catalog is divided into a classified part and a geographical-historical part. (3) The catalog is made accessible and (its

structure) is controlled by an alphabetical index of subject terms. (4) The catalog is "geschlusselt" (that is, it is "keyed" or "coded") [22, pp. 408-9].

1. The recognition of the possibilities and limitations of two essentially different uses of classification, shelf classification, and catalog-entry classification was basic in order to assure that the entries could be rearranged whenever necessary. The book catalog was abandoned, and the use of cards, with the class numbers written in pencil, meant that there was no permanent commitment to any classification decision. Thus, some of the external physical features of the catalog gave it a flexibility which older systems had lacked.

2. The premise that there should be two basic classification approaches, one by subject and one by place, can probably be explained only in terms of Ger- man scholarship. The systematische Abteilung is the subject classification; the geographisch-kistorische Abteilung, which Eppelsheimer called the Ldnder- katalog, was designed to group all subjects as subdivisions of place. It was assumed that there would be multiple entries in the classified catalog and, whenever necessary, a duplication of these entries in the Landerkatalog.

3. Eppelsheimer apparently felt it necessary to mention his use of a subject-word index (that is, the Stickwort- verzeicknis) because many of the older book catalogs did not have indexes. The more traditional theory of the classified catalog considered an index a crutch (or, as Eppelsheimer put it, an Esel- briicke) and not worthy of the true scholar.

4. The use of tables of standard subdivisions (which is what he meant by a geschliisselt or "keyed" catalog) was a major innovation in the German classified catalog. Eppelsheimer seems to have




been the first to refer to these as Schliis- sel, a term which has subsequently been widely adopted in German classification theory.

The method did not outline a scheme of knowledge but provided the broad outlines of the superstructure of a catalog, a system of notation, and tables of standard subdivisions. The two large divisions of the catalog into a classified section and a geographical section were later extended to include a third section based on personal names as subject headings, so that today most libraries using the method have catalogs for subject, place, and person, with one index to the three catalogs.

The classified subject catalog provided the following levels of subject analysis: (1) The Sachgebiete, the major subject areas or classes, (2) the division of each Sachgebiet into Grossgrup- pen (that is, "large groups" which are in fact subclasses), (3) the division of each of the Grossgruppen into further subclasses called Hundertergruppen, (4) the application of the allgemeiner Schluissel (the "general key" or table of standard subdivisions) to each of the Hundertergruppen, and (5) The use of Monographienreiken (series of "monographs" that is, alphabetically arranged subject terms) for divisions or subclasses not provided for in the general key.

SACHGEBIETE

Whether or not we call these "subject areas" classes is probably of little practical significance, since in practice they are, more often than not, similar to major classes in other twentieth-century classification schemes. The choice of the main subject areas is left entirely to the discretion of the libraries using the method. The number of such Sachge- biete in the libraries currently using the

method ranges from as few as nineteen to over thirty. At Mainz in the 1920s, twenty-four Sachgebiete were used: Allgemeines (General Works) Buch- und Bibliothekswesen (Book and Li-

brary Science) Erdkunde (Geography) Geschichte (History) Kulturgeschichte (Cultural History) Kunst (Art) Land-, Forst-, und Hausuirtschaft (Agricul-

ture, Forestry, and Home Economics) Literatur (Literature) Mathematik (Mathematics) Medizin (Medicine) Militdrwissenschaften (Military Sciences) Naturwissenschaften (Natural Sciences) Padagogik (Education) Philosophie (Philosophy) Psychologie, Sagen, Miirchen (Psychology,

Legends, Fairy Tales) Rechtswissenschaft (Law) Religionswissenschaft (Religion) Sozialwissenschaften (Social Sciences) Sport and Spiel, Turnen (Sports and Games,

Gymnastics) Sprachen (Languages) Technik (Technology) Theologie (Theology) Wirtschaftsweissenschaften (Economics) Zeitungen (Newspapers) [21, p. 18]

The last of these subject areas (obviously a form class and not consistent with the others) was dropped, and subsequently four new subject areas were added: Biologie; Buck und Druck; Geographie; and Staat.

It was decided that there was no practical value in arranging these major subject groups in a hierarchical or logical order: whether philosophy comes before or after religion and such concepts as "the order of the sciences" are not rel- evant to the method of the Sackkatalog. The order of the Sachgebiete in the catalog is determined by accidents of language and the alphabet; they are arranged in alphabetical order and identified by abbreviations for the subject terms: all, buck, erd, gesck, kult, kunst, land, etc.




Decisions as to what constitutes a Sachgebiet are made by the libraries using the method and are based on whatever subject areas are appropriate to the collecting activities and services of each specific library. If, for example, a library is strong in the area of geography, then geography is set up as a Sachgebiet; if the library has few books in this area, then geography is one of the Grossgruppen in the larger Sachge- biet for the natural sciences.

GROSSGRUPPEN17

Each subject area is divided into major subclasses based largely on more-or- less generally accepted current approaches to the subject and that reflect the state of the literature of the subject. Neither at this level nor the next level did Eppelsheimer do more than give several examples from the Mainz catalog to illustrate the notation. The Grossgruppen are identified by a series of capital letters, for example: GEOGRAPHIE [geogr] A. Allgemeines B. Volkerkunde/Ethnologie/Anthropogeogra-

phie C. Physikalische Geographie D. Geodasie/Erdmessung/ Gradmessung E. Politische Geographie F. Entdeckungen/ Weltreisen

HUNDERTERGRUPPEN

Each of the Grossgruppen is further broken down into a series of subclasses, each of which is assigned a block of 100 numbers: C. Physikalische Geographie

o00. Flusskunde 200. Seenkunde 300. Meereskunde/Ozeanographie 400. Gebirgskunde/Orographie 500. Klimatkunde/Klimatologie/Klimato-

graphie 600. Erdpole

ALLGEMEINER SCHLUSSEL

The "general key" is a numbered list of ninety-nine standard subdivisions which are used, as needed, to provide the last level of analysis. The Schliussel is an attempt to formalize all divisions which are potentially applicable to any topic and to provide for various external and internal form divisions, for various approaches to the subject, and for local and period treatment of the topic. These ninety-nine subclasses are grouped together within such broad categories as Hilfsschriften, Geschichte der Wissen- schaft, Sammelwerke, Quellen, etc. The numerical notation of the general key, 1 through 99, corresponds to the vacant numbers of each subclass at the Hun- dertergruppen level: C. Physikalische Geographie

100. Flusskunde 101. Bibliographie 102. Periodica (Zeitschriften usw.) 103. Kalendar/Almanachel Taschenbiicher

etc.

MONOGRAPHIENREIHE

The last ten numbers of the general key are set aside for alphabetical subject indexing. In brief, any approach to the subject or any part of the subject which has not been provided for in the allgemeiner Sckliissel is given a subject heading and filed in one of the slots of the monograph series, numbers 89 through 99 of the general key.

What constitutes a "monograph" in this case obviously depends on decisions made at the first three levels of analysis. A book on the subject of counterpoint, for example, might receive two different class numbers in different libraries:

mus B 300 kunst C 293 Kontrapunkt

In the first example, music is a Sachge- biet (that is, a major subject area) and is divided into a series of Grossgruppen,

17 The sections of the Mainz schedules which follow are taken from Eppelscheimer's Koinigsberg paper of 1929 [221.




one of which (B) is the subclass for music theory. Within subclass B, there are a series of Hundertergruppen, each of which is devoted to some part of the broad field of music theory (for example, notation, harmony, counterpoint, etc.). The allgemeiner Schliissel is used for subdivisions between 301 and 399, so that a bibliography of counterpoint would be classed in mus B 301, an intro- ductory text on counterpoint in mus B 364, etc.

In the second example, music is part of a larger Sachgebiet which includes other arts; all books about music must be subarranged in Grossgruppe C, and all books on music theory must be classed in the Hundertergruppe 200. This means that specific aspects of music theory must be given subject headings (in this case, Kontrapunkt) and filed in the monograph series.

LANDERKATALOG

As originally planned by Eppelshei- mer, the geographical-historical catalog was to run parallel with the classified catalog insofar as this was possible. He provided a Landerschliissel which consisted of eighteen major classes, each identified by a capital letter: (A) All- gemeines, (B) Erde und Natur, (C) Geschichte, (D) Kulturgeschichte, (E) Recht, (F) Staat, (G) Gesellschaft, etc. In the catalog, the individual countries were arranged alphabetically and the Ldnderschliissel was used with each. Eppelsheimer proposed several ways of coordinating the classified catalog and the Lenderkatalog so that the notation used for subjects in the classified catalog could also be used in the Lander- katalog. For example, a general work on Feldsteinkirchen would be entered in the classified catalog under kunst B 291; if the book were about such churches in England, it would also get an entry in the Ldnderkatalog with the class

number England Mb 291 (the M is from the Landerschliissel, indicating Kunst of a specific country, and the b in Mb is drawn from the Grossgruppe B of the art schedule of the classified catalog).

METHOD AND SCHEDULE

The method was not presented to the public with detailed classification schedules, but included only a few fragmentary examples from the Mainz schedules to illustrate the notation and the proce- dures involved in constructing the catalog. Eppelsheimer did not even feel it necessary to provide a list of the Sach- gebiete used at Mainz. He made it quite clear that he proposed a method, not a classification scheme:

The Mainzer Sachkatalog is not presented with the claim that it is a generally valid system; it is only one example of a definite method. Two keys [Schliissel] and their use-a method of subject cataloging and its tools-that, in brief, is the content of my presentation. [22, p. 420]

He included complete schedules only for the Schluissel, and few details were included regarding the Monographien- reiken.

Eppelsheimer's reluctance to make any commitment whatsoever to a printed schedule of subject classes and subclasses can only be explained against the background of the times. There seemed to be little hope of achieving standardization in the structure of subject schedules, and, in any case, past experience had shown the impermanence of such schedules. What Eppelsheimer hoped to achieve with his method was a standardization in the mechanics of the catalog in such a way that the individual librarians could retain their traditional prerogative of constructing schedules appropriate to their own needs, or presumed needs.




TERMINOLOGY

Giving titles to specific catalogs was not an uncommon practice in Germany (such catalogs as the Berliner Realkat- alog and the Dresdener Fackkatalog come to mind). Classified catalogs were, and still are, variously referred to as Realkataloge, Fachkataloge, wissen- schaftliche Kataloge, and systematische Kataloge; whereas the term Sackkatalog is ambiguous (that is, it is defined as a "subject catalog" and in general usage may refer to a classified subject catalog or an alphabetical subject-heading catalog: the latter is specifically referred to as a Schlagwortkatalog). The choice of the term Sachkatalog for the Mainz catalog was not an arbitrary decision.

The use of the word "monograph" to identify the type of material entered in the alphabetical section of the allgemeiner Schliissel is difficult to explain. One problem may have been that by 1929 the term alphabetischer Katalog was well established, despite its am- biguity, as the term used to identify the catalog of author entries. This was an unfortunate development, since the Schlagwortkatalog is alphabetical but would never be referred to as an alphabetischer Katalog. The use of the term Stichwort to identify the subject terms used in the Monographienreihen is interesting, since this term suggests subject-heading words taken from the titles of books (that is, "catchword" titles) rather than independent subject headings, which are usually identified as Schlagworte [4, v. 3, pp. 216, 340].

The term Schliissel seems to suggest the user's point of view (that is, it is a "key to the catalog"). As we have pointed out, this term is now widely used to identify tables of standard subdivisions, though some writers use the term Allge- meingruppen for this purpose. Subse- quent users of the Mainz method have

deviated in a few cases from Eppels- heimer's terminology, but by and large his terms have been retained; except for some discussion of the Monographien- reihen, there have been few terminologi- cal difficulties.

EPPELSHEIMER S CO-WORKERS

Besides whatever help he received from the library director, Aloys Ruppel, Eppelsheimer had a series of assistants who worked with him on the catalog: Adolf Wass, Fritz T6lg, and Claus Nis- sen. Waas, who was strongly oriented to public-library service, dropped out of the project very early in its development. In 1924, he left Mainz for Darm- stadt, where he became director of the Stadtbiicherei. By 1929, he was director of the Volksbiichereien at Frankfurt but soon moved on to the Frankfurt City Library. Today this library, now the combined City-University Library, uses the Mainzer Sachkatalog method, but this was a postwar development. Wa.as wrote nothing on classification and is remembered by librarians today for his interest in the use of the bookmobile [38].

Eppelsheimer, Ruppel, and Nissen all made a point of acknowledging the talents and contributions of Fritz T6lg. Tolg was a temporary library employee who went into teaching before the project was completed. He worked with Eppelsheimer during the critical period between 1925 and 1927, when the Schliissel was developed, and seems to have made substantial contributions to its structure, though the precise details of his contributions have not been re- corded. A casualty of the war, Tolg fell at Metz in 1944 [39, p. 251].

Claus Nissen joined the staff in 1927 when Tolg left and stayed at Mainz until his retirement in the early 1960s. He published extensively in the area of




the natural sciences and made substantial contributions to the bibliography of natural-science illustration [40]. Fol- lowing Eppelsheimer's departure from Mainz in 1929, Nissen directed work on the catalog; by this time, all of the main features of the catalog had been planned, and it was largely a matter of continuing with the work. In the published version of his Konigsberg paper, Eppelsheimer had noted that he and Nissen were working on a set of detailed instruction for the method. This was never published, but Nissen himself did publish a study of the method in 1937 [41].

DISPERSAL OF THE METHOD

When he left Mainz to become director of the Hessische Landesbibliothek at Darmstadt in 1929, Eppelsheiiner found the old Schleiermacher system still in use. By this time, the Schleier- macher catalog could not have been much more than a fascinating historical relic, and Eppelsheimer replaced it with a new card catalog based on the same method he had developed at Mainz. The next library to adopt the method was the City Library at Trier, where it was introduced by Hermann Knaus in 1937. Although the method was widely known to librarians through its author's Ko- nigsberg paper, it was not until after World War II that it found wider adoption. This was brought about in part by the havoc of the war, which forced some librarians to replace their old book catalogs (which either were destroyed in the war or were made obsolete by massive losses in their book holdings), and in part by the establishment of several new libraries which had no commitment to older systems.

After years of inactivity during the era of national socialism, Eppelsheimer returned to head the Darmstadt Library

in 1945. His original Darmstadt catalog had been destroyed along with extensive parts of the Darmstadt collection, and he proceeded to construct a new SacAh- katalog. In 1946 he went to head the new City-University Library at Frank- furt and helped to build a new library from the fragmentary remains of the old City Library, which had been almost entirely wiped out during the war."8 In time, a new catalog was constructed according to the Mainz method. The library of the University of Giessen was almost a total loss as the result of an air attack late in December 1944, and it was decided that the Mainz method would be used as the stock was rebuilt. Subsequently, the method was adopted at the University of Tiibingen, at the Hessische Landesbibliothek in Fulda, and at the University of the Saarland (a new university founded in 1950) [43]. It is not without a certain irony that the new University of Mainz, founded in 1946, did not adopt the Mainz method.

The adoption of the method by the library of the Stiftung preussischer Kul- turbesitz (the former Westdeutsche Bibliothek) in 1949 was of considerable significance, since this library has grad- ually taken on the characteristics of a national institution and will probably become one of West Germany's largest and most important libraries [44]. In addition to these general libraries (all of which are scholarly or academic libraries rather than public libraries in the American sense), Artur Brall has identified ten special libraries, covering a wide range of subject areas, which now use the method [45, p. 316].

1 In his survey of the state of German scholarly libraries immediately after World War II, Leyh included information on the condition of the library catalogs, many of which were badly damaged or destroyed [42].




Interest in the classified catalog had continued throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, and has produced a flood of articles, most of which at least men- tioned the Sachkatalog; but among them there was only one really important contribution to the literature about the method. This was published in 1937 in Sigismund Runge's Beitrdge zur Sackkatalogisierung. In some respects, the publication of the Beitrdge closed a chapter in the literature of German library classification. Its contents consisted largely of contributions by members of the Subject Cataloging Commit- tee (Ausschuss fur Sachkatalogisierung) of the Verein deutscher Bibliothekare. The committee, for all practical pur- poses, failed to solve any problems, and with its dissolution the Verein apparently made no further attempts to stan- dardize German classification.

The Beitrdge included Claus Nissen's essay on the theory and practice of the Mainzer Sachkatalog [41]. This and Eppelsheimer's paper of 1929 were the only extended considerations of the method until a series of library-school dissertations came out of the University of Cologne in the 1960s [46, 47, 48].

With two notable exceptions, the En- glish-language library literature has ig- nored the Sachkatalog. In 1941, the Li- brary Quarterly published a translation of Runge's survey of German classification [49]. After this article, United States library literature is practically devoid of any references to German classification. Almost ten years after Runge's article, Kenneth Garside re- viewed the state of subject cataloging in German libraries in the Journal of Documentation and included an account of Eppelsheimer's method [50].

At the time the method was introduced, and especially during the postwar years when it was being widely

adopted, one of its chief advantages was its versatility. This, combined with the lack of published versions of classification schedules worked out with the method and the absence of a central agency to control its use, has contrib- uted to the development of variations in its practical application in the nineteen libraries which use it.

FOCKE AND EPPELSHEIMER

In his study of 1937, Nissen attempt- ed to lay a theoretical foundation for the Sackkatalog. To do this, he used as his point of departure the theories of Rudolf Focke and then went on to re- late Eppelsheimer's ideas to twentieth- century classification theory. A word needs to be said about Focke, since he was one of the most important German theorists (indeed, perhaps the first to deal with the classified catalog).

Writing around the turn of the century, Focke had produced a succinct and carefully considered discussion of the function and general structure of the classified catalog [51, 52, 53]. Nis- sen showed that, in his overall approach, Eppelsheimer had created a catalog which embodied many of Focke's basic assumptions. Focke had concluded that it was the problem of the catalog to deal with books and libraries rather than exclusively with the systematic organization of knowledge according to scientific or philosophical principles. Those parts of the literature actually held by a library and the bibliographical independence of the literature of various subjects were, for Focke, basic cri- teria in setting up classes and subclasses. He was also cognizant of the role of each library's unique function in determining the structure of its catalogs. Furthermore, as far as the library was concerned, an inner-motivated series of main classes was of very slight




practical significance. Even a justification for the Mainz method's Monogra- phienreiken could be found in Focke's belief that classes with large numbers of coordinated subdivisions should em- ploy an alphabetical subject arrangement.

Nissen showed that the Mainzer Sackkatalog did not represent a radical departure from the past and in many ways was an outgrowth of traditional practice.

CONCLUSION

The Mainzer Sachkatalog was produced in response to the need for a relatively simple method for constructing a classified catalog for public use, a catalog which would be flexible enough to change with changes in knowledge. Eppelsheimer proceeded from the as- sumption that a classification schedule, any classification schedule, would soon become outdated; hence, he turned to the methodology of catalog construction. At the heart of the method is the concept that the means for the methodi- cal analysis of the literature about a subject must be independent of the structure of the individual areas of knowledge. This is a concept which was needed to bring German classification into the twentieth century, and for this reason, if for no other, the Mainzer Sachkatalog is a landmark in German classification history.

The impact of the method outside of Germany has been negligible; but within Germany, and especially within West Germany, it has had an impact on almost all classification thinking since the early 1930s. The only other German system with which Eppelsheimer's method can be compared is the "analytical catalog" method of Hans Trebst [54]. Working at Dresden between 1925 and 1935, Trebst produced a catalog

(or rather a fragment of a catalog) based on his own analytical method. Except for the work of Aschenborn [55], Trebst's theories have been little investigated, but even a cursory examination of his writings indicates that he was far ahead of his time and may even have anticipated some of the ideas of S. R. Ranganathan. Eppelsheimer became acquainted with Trebst and his work after he had finished his own work at Mainz, and it has been suggested by Nissen that subsequent changes in the Darmstadt version of the Schlussel can be attributed to Trebst's influence [41, p. 99]. However, the origins of the Mainz Schliissel and its relationship to the use of similar devices in earlier German systems, in the systems of Dewey, Brown, Bonazzi, and Trebst, and in the Universal Decimal Classifi- cation have not been thoroughly investigated.

Eppelsheimer's approach required that notation play only a relatively minor role in the basic structure of the method. Only in the Schliissel is the notation rigidly fixed into schedules. The assignment of letters to each of the Grossgruppen and the assignment of numbers to each of the Hundertergrup- pen are fixed at any given time in any given library; but these can be (and are supposed to be) added to, changed, or deleted whenever changes in the library's holdings or changes in knowledge make such changes necessary. It would seem that a potential problem for the libraries using the method is that they have to construct systems of knowledge in the form of classification schedules to which the method is ap- plied. Such an approach, however, is not peculiar to the libraries using the Mainz method but is in fact the tradition in German scholarly libraries. The librarians who work with the catalogs are




subject specialists who have been trained in classification.

Theoretically, there is hardly any limit to the possibilities for expansion of the Sachkatalog. Since the main subject areas are identified by abbreviations for descriptive terms, new ones can be added indefinitely. The series of subclasses at the first level of division can be extended by going to a notation using two or even three letters (for example, sprach A, sprach AB, spracl AC, etc.). The possible number of subclasses at the Hundertergruppen level amounts to 100 if the numbers between 100 and 10,000 are used; by going to 100,000 the number of subdivisions at this level would run to 1,000. In theory, then, the potential number of subdlasses is as- tronomical. In practice, the use of subject indexing in the Monographienreihen (which is more than a device for tying up loose ends: it is an integral part of the method) makes such detail unneces- sary, for within this "monograph series" there is as much room for expansion as in any alphabetical subject file.

From the standpoint of classification theory, the most interesting problem of the Sachkatalog is its combination of logical classification and alphabetical subject indexing. This, combined with what amounts almost to indifference to the potential of classification notation, makes it difficult to explain the method in terms of traditional classification theory, or even to compare it with other twentieth-century systems.

The future of the method is tied in with the future of the classified catalog generally. There are, in Germany as elsewhere, few if any major libraries which are not already committed to and deeply involved in their own systems. Among the new German libraries only recently committed (those at the universities of Bochum, Regensburg, Bre-

men, Bielefeld, Constance, and Dort- mund), decisions have been complicated by the rise of automation and new concepts of library organization and service. None of these new libraries has elected to go to the Mainz method. One of the principal reasons for this is that they are, for the most part, committed to the principle of open stacks and are therefore interested in shelf classification. They are also largely committed to finding new subject approaches which are compatible with techniques of auto- mated data processing. In any case, no major library has adopted the Mainz method since 1959, and, despite its wide acceptance, the Mainzer Sachkatalog has not found enough followers to raise it to the status of a national system. It seems that Germany will not, in the foreseeable future, have anything like one widely used classification scheme.

There are two areas where more research is needed. The first is related to the use of the classified catalog in German libraries. There need to be classified-catalog use studies; it is difficult to see how a future course for its development can be charted without more information. It is not known to what extent these catalogs fulfill their intended function (and we are not speaking only of the Mainz-method catalogs). The second area of research re- lates specifically to the Mainz method. Here, what is most needed is more information on classification schemes (specific, detailed schedules and lists of subject headings) which are used with the method.

When Eppelsheimer spoke to the assembled librarians at Konigsberg, he said what many of them already knew -that something had to be done about the "truly Babylonian" condition of the classified catalog [56, p. 435]. Because




of subsequent political and economic events, there was in fact little that any- one could do. Following the war, the chaos and confusion were so widespread and of such catastrophic proportions that for almost twenty years librarians had little time to concern themselves. with the problems of classification reform. Now, some forty years after the

Konigsberg meeting, the German classified catalog is, if anything, even more complicated than it was in 1929. But whatever progress has been made toward clarifying the problem and laying a foundation for its solution is due in no small measure to Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer and his altogether favor- able impact on German librarianship.

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the mainzer sachkatalog and its background

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